Hope for email addicts is here

Let’s play a game: Go for as long as you can without checking your e-mail. Sounds easy… Let’s play a game: Go for as long as you can without checking your e-mail. Sounds easy enough, right? Not for everyone. In fact, some people can’t walk past a computer, whether that computer belongs to them or not, without checking their e-mail. In an office full of desks and computers, you can imagine how time-consuming that could be.

It seems that our current technological climate has created a new addiction of sorts – e-mail addiction. The afflicted compulsively check their e-mail on computers and through other gadgets. An Associated Press article mentioned a man who couldn’t get through a game of golf without checking his BlackBerry after every hole. A potential client was so turned off by the man’s obsessive behavior that he decided not to do business with him.

E-mail addiction can cost people more than their time: It can cost money and opportunities. It can also make you look a little crazy, to boot.

If you suffer from e-mail addiction, there’s good news for you. A 12-step program has been developed by an executive coach in Pennsylvania to help people get over their addiction and resume control over their lives. Hey, if it works for drug addicts and alcoholics, why not e-mail addicts?

First step: admit you have a problem.

Second step: E-mail your friends and tell them you’re sorry?

The program encourages people to only check their e-mail three to four times a day and to immediately answer e-mails that will only require a minute or two of time. E-mail that requires more in-depth answers should be filed away for later. This way, addicts will keep a clean inbox and feel in control of the technology. While there aren’t any 12-step meetings being held currently, the creator plans on holding a monthly teleconference for addicts.

While this program might help people create a more structured and restrained system for keeping on top of their inbox, e-mail, unlike alcohol or drugs, isn’t exactly something you can live without. You can go through Alcoholics Anonymous, become sober and never touch a drop of the stuff again. Employers aren’t going to be very understanding if you show up to work and tell them that you’re going to abstain from e-mailing. You’ll probably get fired.

There are also pressures to instantly correspond. E-mail and cell phones have made nearly everyone accessible all the time, and it’s put a lot of pressure on people. Work adds to this pressure – especially if you receive a high volume of e-mail every day. Checking your e-mail only three times a day might cause you to feel even more overwhelmed.

People might not ever be able to live without e-mail. Perhaps the only way we can relieve the stress of having to be consistently accessible – stress that leads to e-mail addiction – is to lower our expectations for immediate response. If we walk away from the computer and give each other a chance to breathe, we might feel less stressed and less chained to our inboxes.